MACKINNON states that “Painting for me is a way of thinking…an open-ended sort of intuitive tinkering and discovery. Each day I come into the studio feeling different. I often leave notes from the end of the previous day as a clue of how to proceed. But since then, a lot has happened. I feel different…Sleep, dreams, what I have seen on my drive to work or along the coast, and my feelings all creep into my artwork. I try to bring this new version of myself into the next phase of the painting…that “quick thinking” which draws on everything you have seen and felt and read and looked at in a lifetime. In the end, all of my paintings are self portraits.”

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About WILLIAM MACKINNON

Born in 1978 in Melbourne, Australia, WILLIAM MACKINNON earned his BA from Melbourne University, his MFA for Victorian College of the Arts and his Post Graduate Diploma from the Chelsea School of Art and Design in London. I Am Beginning to See the Light marks MACKINNON’s third solo exhibition in North America, all of them at Morton Fine Art in Washington, DC.

MACKINNON’s many accolades include exhibiting as a finalist in the Basil Sellers Art Prize at the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne in both 2014 and 2016. He has also been a finalist multiple times for both the prestigious Fleurier Landscape Prize and Arthur Guy Memorial Prize at the Bendigo Regional Art Gallery. His artwork can be found in the permanent collections of Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne University, State Library of Victoria,Joyce Nissan Collection, Artbank, Griffith University, Macquarie Bank Collections RACV and Stonnington Council Collections.

Born into a family legacy of internationally renowned fine artists, MACKINNON participated in a noteworthy three generation exhibition, Landscape of Longing: Shoreham 1950-2012, at the Mornington Pennisula Regional Gallery in Australia which included a number of works by his mother, KATHERINE HATTAM (b. 1950) and his grandfather, HAL HATTAM (b.1913 d.1994).